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The Dating Game Killer: Rodney Alcala’s Trail of Murder · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I want you to imagine something for a second.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: OK.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Imagine you are sitting in a television studio audience. Right.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Picture it.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: It airs the late 1970s. The lights are super bright
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: and the colors are that loud. You know, that unmistakable
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: 70s orange and brown.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. The classic look.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And you're watching this popular kind of cheesy
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: dating show on national TV. Right. The audience is laughing,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: the bachelorette is asking these really cheeky questions, and the
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: bachelor answering them is charming, he's witty, he's handsome.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: A total normal scene, right?
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Exactly. But now, I want you to imagine that the
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: man sitting on that stool, smiling so effortlessly at the camera,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: is currently one of the most prolific, brutal serial killers
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: in American history.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: It's just chilling.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Right. He is actively hiding in plain sight. Yeah. So today,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: we aren't just looking at the crimes of Roddy Alcala.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: We are looking at the massive, terrifying blind spots in
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: our society that allowed him to sit confidently under those
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: studio lights.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: It really forces you to completely reevaluate that assumption. You know,
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: the assumption that predators always look like predators.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Yes, exactly.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: The idea that someone so dangerous can just integrate so
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: seamlessly into mainstream culture, it's profoundly unsettling. But it's a
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: crucial reality to understand.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: I couldn't agree more. So welcome to this deep dive, everyone.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Glad to be here.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Our mission today is to explore a chilling and honestly,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: incredibly thorough investigative report from CBS News and 48 Hours.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Led by correspondent Peter Van Sand.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Right. Regarding this massive case of Rodney Alcala. But I
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: want to be completely clear with you right out of
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: the gate.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: That's important. Yeah.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Our goal here is not to just like recite a
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: list of true crime facts or recount gruesome details for
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: shock value?
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: No, not at all.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: What we are going to do is examine the catastrophic,
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: decades-long systemic failures that allowed a monster to slip through
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: the cracks of the justice system over and over again.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: Long list of failures, too.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: It really is. And perhaps more importantly, we are going
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: to highlight the relentless, awe-inspiring perseverance... Of the victim's families.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: The families who simply refuse to let their loved ones
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: be forgotten.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Exactly. I have been so eager to understand the actual
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: mechanics of this sprawling case. I mean, how does someone
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: operate across decades and across the entire country without being stopped?
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: That is the central puzzle we really need to deconstruct today.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: What's truly fascinating here, what we're really tracing, is the
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: evolution of criminal investigation running completely parallel to Alcala's timeline.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's a great point. Right.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: We are analyzing a killer who is perfectly adapted to
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: thrive in an era of, well, disconnected police departments.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: Paper files, no computer.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Paper files and massive jurisdictional blind spots. Right. Watching
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: how he was eventually undone by a combination of modern
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: forensic science and, honestly, sheer unpredictable luck, it provides this
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: incredible master class in how society's defenses against predators have
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: had to radically evolve.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. But I want to avoid just,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: you know, walking through a dry calendar of events.
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: Let's look at the psychology.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Yes. Let's look at the foundation of the psychology we're
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: dealing with, starting with the very first warning signs that
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: society completely ignored.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: And there were early signs.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Huge ones. So from the sources, we know Alcala was
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: born in San Antonio in 1943. Yeah. And his father
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: abandoned the family when he was young.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Which is a common early stressor, unfortunately.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but things really take a sharp turn when he
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: joins the army at 17.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: He doesn't exactly find discipline there.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: No, he finds a wall. He is discharged after suffering
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: a nervous breakdown coupled with allegations of sexual misconduct.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: Yes.
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  Speaker 1: The military formally recognized him as a quote-unquote sexual deviant
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: as early as 1963.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: Think about that year, 1963.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Right. So my first question is, how does an institution
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: like the U.S. military... identify someone as a severe behavioral
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: threat in 1963, and then seemingly do nothing to warn
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: the public?
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  Speaker 2: Well, you really have to look at how information was,
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: or more accurately, wasn't shared during that era.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Okay, lay that out for us.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: The military in 1963 was an absolute monolith.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 2: They had their own internal psychiatric evaluations, their own judicial system,
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: and their own methods for quietly excising problematic individuals.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Just sweeping it under the rug.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: Essentially, yes. When they labeled him a sexual deviant, they
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: were identifying a profound psychological anomaly.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: A huge red flag.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: A massive red flag. But in the early 1960s, there
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: was absolutely no mechanism, no database, no automatic alert system
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: to hand that intelligence over to civilian law enforcement.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: So they just let him go?
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  Speaker 2: To the military, the problem was solved the moment he
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: was discharged. He was simply released back into the general
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: population with a completely blank slate as far as local
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: police were concerned.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Wow. And five years later, the consequences of that blank
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: slate become horrifyingly clear.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: Tragically clear.
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  Speaker 1: We are in Los Angeles, 1968. An eight-year-old girl named
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Tali Shapiro is walking to school.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: Just a normal morning.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Right. And a beige car with no license plates pulls
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: up and she is lured into the vehicle.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: But this brings something fascinating about this case, the role
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: of everyday people. Yes.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: The Good Samaritan.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Exactly.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: A good Samaritan sees this happen, realizes something is deeply wrong,
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: and actually follows the car and calls the LAPD.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: That civilian intervention is the only reason we even know
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: about this early attack.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, without cell phones.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: Right, without cell phones, without ubiquitous ring cameras, an abduction
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: in 1968 usually just ended in a missing person's flyer
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: taped to a telephone pole.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: God, that's grim.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: It is. But because someone trusted their gut and acted...
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: Former LAPD officer Chris Camacho gets the call and responds
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: immediately to the address.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Okay, so Officer Camacho arrives at Alcala's residence. He knocks,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: announces himself as police, and Alcala actually opens the door.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: He opens the door.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: I know. And Camacho later described the face looking back
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: at him as a, quote, very evil face.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: The intuition kicks in immediately for the officer.
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Right. But Alcala tries to play it cool. He claims
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: he is in the shower and needs to get dressed.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: Just stalling for time.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Camacho gives him 10 seconds, and when Alcala doesn't return,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: the officer kicks the door in.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: Which is totally justified.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: And the scene is a nightmare. He walks into the
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: kitchen and sees a massive puddle of blood, a heavy
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: metal bar, and Tali's little white Mary Jane shoes on
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: the floor.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: Those shoes are a detail that prosecutors later highlighted. You know,
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: because they really ground the extreme violence of the scene
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: in the profound innocence of the victim.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: It's heartbreaking.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: It really is. When Camacho first saw her, she wasn't breathing.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: He genuinely thought he had just walked into a homicide.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: But then Camacho hears a gargling sound.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: Tali is miraculously still alive. She is rushed to the
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: hospital and she survives.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Which is incredible.
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: But while Camacho is focused on trying to save this
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  Speaker 1: child's life, Alcala slips out the back door.
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  Speaker 2: He just vanishes.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: It is exactly like a horror movie where the monster
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: slides out the back window just as the hero breaches
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  Speaker 1: the front door.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: That's a great analogy, actually.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: And I really have to push back here because this
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: aspect of the story drives me crazy.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: I know where you're going with this.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: How does a suspect leave behind a house full of
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: physical evidence? I mean, the police found a massive stash
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: of photos of young girls. They found his active UCLA
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: student ID. How does he somehow just vanish into the
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: wind without immediate capture? He would almost zero head start.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: I completely understand the frustration. It's maddening. But it highlights
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: the severe limitations of investigative technology at the time.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, explain that to me.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: Let's separate this into two parts, the psychology of the
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: escape and the mechanics of the evasion.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: Psychologically, former FBI profiler Mary Ellen O'Toole analyzed this exact moment.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: She noted that Alcala was in a constant predatory mode.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: Right. Hunting.
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  Speaker 2: Hunting. the thrill of the chase, the manipulation that was
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: his baseline. When Camacho kicked in that door, a normal
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: person might freeze in panic.
• 8:16
  Speaker 4: Shock.
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  Speaker 2: But Alcala's survival instinct, honed by his predatory nature, instantly activated.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: He didn't freeze. He fluidly transitioned to escape.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: But the ID.
• 8:25
  Speaker 4: They knew exactly who he was and where he went
• 8:28
  Speaker 4: to school.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: Yes. Yes, they did. But you have to untrain your
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: brain constantly. From modern expectations.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Okay, fair enough.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: Today, if you drop your ID at a crime scene,
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: the police instantly freeze your bank accounts, they track your
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: cell phone pings, they pull your digital footprint, and flag
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: your face on airport cameras nationwide within minutes.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: Right, you're trapped immediately.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: In 1968, a physical ID is just a piece of
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: cardboard with a name and a static address.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: Just a piece of paper, basically. Right.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: If the suspect isn't physically standing at that address when
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: the police arrive... The trail evaporates. It's a totally analog world.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: So wild.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: Detective Steve Hodel went to UCLA, talked to Ocala's professor,
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: and hit a wall of absolute disbelief.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Disbelief.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the professor defended him, saying, quote, Rod Ocala wouldn't
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: hurt anybody. He's a great guy.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: Oh, my God. So he was already compartmentalizing his life perfectly.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: Precisely. He was a snake charmer. He presented such a
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: convincing facade of normalcy and intellect that that the people
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: who interacted with him daily couldn't fathom what he was
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: capable of.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Which buys a fugitive precious time.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: Okay, I can see how he gets out of the neighborhood.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: But fleeing a crime scene by the skin of your
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: teeth is one thing, right? Completely reinventing yourself under the
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: nose of the federal government is another entirely.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: Oh, completely.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: By 1969, Alcala officially makes the FBI's 10 Most Wanted
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: list for the attack on Tally Shapiro.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: The top 10 list.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: That's massive.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: You'd think the walls are closing in. but instead of
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: hiding in a bunker, he moves to New York and
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: just adopts a new identity.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: He just reinvents himself.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: He starts calling himself John Berger.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: And he charms his way into the prestigious NYU film school.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: And this is the hallmark of a highly intelligent, highly educated,
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: Narcissistic sociopath.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: To just go to NYU. Yeah.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: He doesn't believe the rules of society apply to him.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: And he assumes he is fundamentally smarter than the authorities
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: hunting him. He didn't just hide. He actively integrated into
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: a high-profile academic environment. And for a terrifyingly long time,
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: his arrogance was justified by the system's inability to catch him.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: It is staggering. He is on the 10 most wanted list.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: And he's sitting in film classes in Manhattan discussing cinema.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: It's surreal.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: But the mask eventually slips. In June 1971, the violence
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: explodes again with the tragic murder of 23-year-old Cornelia Michael Crilley,
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: a flight attendant for TWA.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: A horrific case.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: Her boyfriend comes home to an apartment Cornelia had just
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: moved into, finds the door locked, and eventually the police
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: discover a horrific scene. She had been brutally strangled with
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: a nylon stocking, bitten on the breast, and left near
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: a letter that contained a single, unmatched fingerprint.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: The ferocity of that crime scene tells a very specific
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: story to profilers.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: What does it tell them?
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: Well, the biting, the strangulation, the binding. This wasn't a
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: burglary that had escalated into panic.
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: This was an intensely personal, sadistic act of control and dominance.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: The police in New York, including former cold case detective
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: Steve Puccini, recognized immediately that they were dealing with a
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: highly dangerous sexual predator.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: But they had a massive logistical wall, right?
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: A huge one.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: Because they have a fingerprint, but no one to match
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: it to because John Berger isn't in their system.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: But wait, how do they even check a fingerprint in 1971?
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: It's not like they can just scan it into a computer.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: That is a fantastic question, and it really illustrates the
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: error we're talking about.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, how did that work?
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: In 1971, fingerprints were cataloged using the Henry Classification System.
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: It required highly trained technicians... to manually analyze the loops, whorls,
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: and arches, assign a complex alphanumeric formula to it, and
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: then physically search through cavernous rooms filled with hundreds of
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: thousands of paper cards in filing cabinets.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, by hand.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: Entirely by hand. If you didn't have a suspect to
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: compare it directly against, doing a quote-unquote cold search was
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: like looking for a needle in a stadium full of hay.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: That's impossible.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: And New York in 1971 was incredibly violent. There were
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: nearly 2,000 homicides that year alone.
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: So the detectives worked the case incredibly hard, but without
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: digital databases, the case simply went cold.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: So the NYPD is desperately searching for Cornelius Killer, and
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Alcala just packs up and moves on.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: He just leaves.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: He gets a job as a counselor at a girls'
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: arts and drama camp in New Hampshire.
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: Let me let that sink in.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: A counselor at a girls' camp. It's nauseating. But this
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: is where his immense ego finally trips him up, thanks
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: to two young campers.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: Such a crazy twist.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: They happen to be at the local post office. They
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: look at the FBI most wanted poster on the wall,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: and they realize the man staring back at them is
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: their camp counselor, Mr.
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: Berger.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: It is a remarkable moment of situational awareness by those
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: young girls. They tell the dean, the authorities are called,
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: and the FBI finally arrests him. The FBI contacts California
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: and says, we've got your fugitive.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: You would think this is the end of the line. Right.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: He's caught. He's going to prison for what he did
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: to eight-year-old Tali Shapiro.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: But no.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: No. Because Tali's family had left the country in the
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: intervening years, California prosecutors didn't have their main witness for trial.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: A huge problem for them.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: So they offer Alcala a plea deal.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: He pleads guilty to a lesser charge of child molestation
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: and he is sentenced to one year to life. And
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: he serves 34 months.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: It's hard to believe.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: 34 months. He is paroled after less than three years.
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: Hold on.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: I need to stop you there because I'm genuinely furious
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: on behalf of you listening.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: It is infuriating.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: I understand plea deals are common, but we are talking
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: about a man on the FBI's 10 most wanted list.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: Did the parole board literally not have a telephone to
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: call the original detectives?
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: You'd think so, but.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: How does the bureaucracy actually fail that spectacularly? So what
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: does this all mean for the justice system of the time?
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: You know, I was looking at that exact same detail.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: And what is truly fascinating here is the absolute siloing
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: of information and the rigid legal framework of the era.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: Walk me through it.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: Let's break down the mechanics of that failure. First, the prosecution. Right.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: California is prosecuting him solely for the assault on Tally Shapiro.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: They know he fled. They know he was on the
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: most wanted list. But in a 1970s courtroom without DNA evidence...
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: Eyewitness testimony is everything.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: Because they have no science to back it up.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Without Talley there to testify, the prosecution's case was
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: incredibly fragile. A competent defense attorney would have shredded it.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: So prosecutors engaged in risk management. They secured a guaranteed
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: conviction on a lesser charge rather than risk him walking
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: free entirely on a lack of testimony.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: I get that. But the parole board, they let him
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: out in 34 months.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: And that is the catastrophic human error. Parole boards operate
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: heavily on the paperwork right in front of them.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Just looking at a file.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. They looked at a file that said child molestation,
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: not attempted murder by bludgeoning with a metal bar.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: He is paroled back to Los Angeles. He is required
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: to register as a sex offender, which he does. But
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: nobody checks on him. Nobody monitors his day to day life.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: Registration without active enforcement is essentially just administrative paperwork.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: It does nothing. Right.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: It provides a false sense of security to the community.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: while placing zero actual friction on the Predators movements.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: And look at what he does with that unmonitored freedom.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: He gets a respectable job as a typesetter for the
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: Los Angeles Times.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: A great cover.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: He starts photographing weddings. He is actively placing himself in
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: the center of cultural and social celebrations, constantly surrounded by people,
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: constantly looking through a camera lens.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: Normalizing himself.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: And then in what has to be one of the
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: most surreal moments in modern history, he is chosen as
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: a contestant on... The dating game.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: The dating game.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: For those who don't know, this was a massive nationally
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: televised show. I keep coming back to this because here's
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: where it gets really interesting. We have this incredible chilling
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: contrast between... The handsome, smart young man the studio audience
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: sees and the reality of a brutal killer sitting on
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: a barstool trading double entendres.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: It's deeply unsettling.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: What does it say about his internal psychology that he
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: went on national television while actively hiding these dark urges?
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: It speaks volumes about the depth of his narcissism.
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: For a standard criminal, national television is a nightmare. You know,
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: it's exposure. It's a huge risk of being recognized.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: Obviously. You want to hide. Right.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: But for a psychopathic serial killer like Alcala, it is
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: the ultimate thrill. It's the absolute apex of the hunt.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: By going on the dating game, he wasn't just hiding
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: in plain sight. He was laughing at the world. He
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: was proving to himself that he was smarter, more charming,
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: and completely superior to the society he was preying upon.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: Like a sick game.
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: Exactly. He was testing his mask under the brightest lights
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: possible and reveling in the fact that it held up.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: And he actually wins the show.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: He does.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: He wins the date with the bachelorette, Cheryl Bradshaw. But
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: the incredible part is what happens backstage.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: This is such a crucial moment.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: After spending just a little bit of time talking to
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: him off camera in the green room, Cheryl backs out
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: of the date. She flat out refuses to go, telling
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: the producers that she found him, quote, creepy.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: That is a phenomenal, life-saving detail.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: Just creepy.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: Think about it. The entire criminal justice system, the parole boards,
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: the police, the FBI, the background checkers at a major
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: television network, they all failed to see through his mask.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: But one woman's raw intuition saved her life.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: What exactly is happening in her brain in that moment?
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: What does creepy mean from a psychological standpoint?
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: Humans have a highly evolved primal threat detection system. When
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: we interact with someone, we are processing thousands of microexpressions,
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: body language cues, and tonal shifts subconsciously.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: Things we aren't even aware of. Right.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: A psychopath often mimics human emotion perfectly on a macro level.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: You know, smiling at the right time, laughing at the joke,
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: but they fail at the micro level.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: I need details.
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: The smile doesn't reach the eyes. The reaction time is
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: a millisecond too slow. The stare is slightly too intense.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: Her brain registered these incongruities as a profound primal threat.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: She couldn't articulate the clinical diagnosis of psychopathy, obviously. Her
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: brain just handed her the feeling of creepy as an
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: alarm bell to get away.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: It gives you chills. Just trusting that alarm bell was
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: enough for her to walk away.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: She listened to it.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: But not everyone had the chance to walk away, or
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: the luck to see behind the mask. Alcala's ego, emboldened
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: by his freedom and, honestly, probably enraged by rejection, drove
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: him back across the country.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: Very dangerous reaction.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: We've seen how he exploited the anonymity of big cities,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: and now he's about to weaponize the isolation of the
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: open road. It's 1977. 1977 is a pivotal year.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: How so? The cultural landscape of the 1970s, the hitchhiking culture,
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: the sheer openness of society, the transient lifestyle. It provided
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: the perfect camouflage for a predator operating on this scale.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: Alcala returns to New York. And keep in mind the
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: historical context here. This is the terrified, paranoid New York
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: of the sun. of Sam era.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: Total panic in the streets.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: The city is already on edge. People are terrified of
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: the dark.
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: Police resources are stretched to the absolute limit.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: And into this chaos walks Rodney Alcala.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: The perfect storm for him.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: He targets Ellen Hover, a 23-year-old musician and artist. And
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Ellen wasn't just anybody. She came from a prominent show
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: business family. Her godfathers were Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: Which means massive media attention.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: When she goes missing, it is front page news.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: The pressure on the NYPD was immense, and they did solid,
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: fundamental missing persons legwork. But they were looking for a
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: needle in a haystack in a city of millions during
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: an active, localized serial killer panic that was draining all
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: their bandwidth.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: And this is where I have to push back again
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: on the investigation.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: Okay, let's hear it.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: Because there was a massive physical clue left behind... Ellen's
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: calendar in her apartment explicitly noted a meeting with John
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: Berger on the day she disappeared.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: Now, John Berger is the exact alias Alcala used when
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: he was arrested in New Hampshire a few years prior.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: It is.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: How did investigators miss that connection? If a missing woman
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: has a calendar entry for a known alias of a
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: man previously tracked by the FBI, how does that not
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: immediately set off alarm bells?
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: I get it. It sounds crazy now. But when we
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: connect this to the bigger picture of 1970s data management,
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: it becomes tragically clear how this happened.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, lead out.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: Today, you type John Berger into a global search bar
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: and every police report in the country pops up instantly. Right.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: In 1977, a calendar entry in a Manhattan apartment wouldn't
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: automatically query an arrest record from New Hampshire or a
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: parole file in California.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: Because nothing is connected.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: Nothing. To make that connection, a New York detective would
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: have to physically request FBI files, cross-reference known aliases by hand,
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: and rely on interagency memos that took weeks to process
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: through the mail.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: Just waiting on the post office.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and assuming they even knew to ask the FBI
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: for help on a local missing persons case, Alcala thrived
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: in the seams between jurisdictions. He knew that crossing a
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: state line was as good as erasing his identity.
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: Ellen Hover's body was found a year later in Westchester.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: So decomposed, she had to be identified by dental records.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: The trail had gone completely cold.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: And while New York is frantically searching for Ellen, Alcala
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: is already gone.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: Back on the road.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: He embarks on this meandering cross-country road trip back to California.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: Along the way, he meets 29-year-old Christine Ruth Fortin.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: Another tragic encounter.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: She is from Texas, she is six months pregnant, and
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: she is traveling to Montana to pan for gold with
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: her boyfriend. The boyfriend leaves the picture... She crosses paths
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: with Alcala, and she vanishes completely.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: He weaponized the vast American landscape.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: It's just the emptiness of it all. Right.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: The lonely highways, the desert plains, they became his personal
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: hunting ground. He specifically targeted vulnerable women. And a woman
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: traveling alone, pregnant, in the vastness of the West in
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: the late 70s was tragically vulnerable to a predator offering
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: a ride or taking a photograph.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: The heartbreak of Christine's disappearance is really anchored by the
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: incredible dedication of her younger sister, Kathy Thornton.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: Kathy's story is amazing.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: For 39 years, think about that, nearly four decades, Kathy
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: tirelessly wrote letters.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: 39 years.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: She wrote to the FBI, the Social Security Administration, the
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: Department of Human Services. She kept a meticulous paper trail.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: begging for any sign of her sister, any employment record,
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: any breadcrumb.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: Never giving up.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: And for 39 years, she hit dead end after dead end.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: It really connects you to the emotional toll on the families.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: They aren't just missing a person. They are trapped in
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: a void.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: Psychologists refer to that as ambiguous loss.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: Ambiguous loss. Yeah.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: It is a unique kind of psychological torture because the
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: grieving process is frozen. There is no body, no funeral,
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: no finality. Kathy Thornton's Resilience is.
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: Alcala's ability to operate in this vast emptiness, moving from
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: victim to victim without leaving a cohesive trail, seemed absolutely flawless.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: He's very confident.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: But a predator's ultimate downfall is usually their own arrogance.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: They get sloppy. Which is exactly what happened when he
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: tried to hunt in his own backyard in broad daylight
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: in Southern California.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: You got too comfortable.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: We are in June 1979 now.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: This is the critical turning point. This is where the
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: perfect storm of sheer luck, observant citizens, and meticulous police
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: work finally converges to disrupt his pattern.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: It's a beautiful summer day on a Southern California beach.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Twelve-year-old Robin Samso is on her way to ballet class,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: but first, she and her best friend Bridget are playing
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: on the sand.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: Just being kids.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: A dark-haired man approaches them and offers to take their picture.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: Bridget later described him as honing in on them, quote,
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: like a shark in the water.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: A chilling description.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: He is setting his trap. But then, an incredibly observant
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: neighbor named Jackie Young pops up and just asks the
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: girls if everything is okay.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: That neighborly intervention is everything. Predators rely on isolation and control.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: By simply asking a question, Jackie Young introduced a variable
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: he couldn't control. a witness who was actively paying attention
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: to his face and his behavior. It shattered his dominance
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: of the situation.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: Bridget said the man was so spooked that he fled, quote,
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: like smoke coming off his dress shoes.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: He bolted.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: He vanished instantly. Robin packed up her things, hopped on
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: Bridget's bike to head to her ballet lesson, and she vanished. Yeah.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: Twelve days later, a fire crew doing routine maintenance in
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: a remote mountainous location finds Robin's remains.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: It's sad.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: They were so brutally scavenged by animals that the police
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: had to tell Robin's mother, Marianne Connolly, that her daughter
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: had no hair left to identify. It is a horrific,
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: gut-wrenching detail.
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: It is devastating for the family.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: I can't even imagine.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: But the brief encounter on the beach gave law enforcement
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: exactly what they needed. Because the neighbor broke the spell,
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: Bridget was highly alert.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: She was paying attention.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: She was able to provide an incredibly detailed description of
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: the man to a police sketch artist.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: And here is the first massive stroke of luck.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: That sketch is broadcast on the local news. And Alcala,
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: parole officer, remember, he's still technically a registered sex offender
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: on parole, recognizes the face.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: A huge break in the case.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: He calls the detectives and says, you need to look
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: at Rodney Alcala. They find out he has no alibi.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: He lives near the mountains where Robin was found. And
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: they arrest him at his mother's house.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: But an arrest isn't a conviction.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: In a court of law, a sketch and a lack
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: of an alibi are circumstantial. They needed physical, undeniable evidence
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: linking him directly to Robin.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: Which leads to the second massive stroke of luck. While
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Alcala is sitting in jail, his sister comes to visit him.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: The conversation is being recorded by the jail.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: Which he didn't account for.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: During the visit, Alcala whispers to his sister, telling her
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: to go to a storage locker in Seattle and clear
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: it out immediately.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: He's panicking.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: What he didn't realize is that during his arrest, police
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: had already found a receipt for that exact locker in
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: his house.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: Just sloppy.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: Detective Pat Ellis and his team realized they had to
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: get there before the sister destroyed the evidence. They literally
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: race her there and beat her to the locker.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: It's like a movie. The contents of that locker.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: It was described by investigators as the absolute, quote, A
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: motherload of evidence.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: They open it up and find thousands of photographs of
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: vulnerable women and young girls.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: Thousands.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: And buried under all of it, a small silk bag
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: filled with earrings. They show the jewelry to Robin's mother, Marianne,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: and she immediately identifies a pair of gold ball studs
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: that belonged to her, which Robin often borrowed.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: Undeniable proof.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: Think about this for a second. It's like a house
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: of cards. For ten years, he built this structure based
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: on jurisdictional blind spots and physical distance.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: But a house of cards isn't glued together. It requires
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: perfect environmental conditions to stand.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: That's a really good way to frame it.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: The moment one observant neighbor introduces a breeze, a single
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: variable he can't control, he panics, gets sloppy on a
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: recorded jail line, and the entire structure collapses.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: It is a stunning cascade of errors on his part,
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: driven entirely by his own hubris. But we really need
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: to analyze the contents of that storage locker.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's look at that.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: Keeping thousands of photos and a bag of victims' jewelry
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: isn't just about hoarding, you know. It serves a profound
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: psychological purpose for a serial killer.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: Trophies, basically.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Those items are trophies. They are tactile, visual anchors
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: that allow the predator to endlessly relive the power, the control,
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: and the excitement of the murders long after the event.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: By keeping those earrings, Alcala believed he was keeping a
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: piece of Robin. He couldn't let go of his trophies,
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: and that deep-seated psychological need is exactly what provided the
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: physical evidence that cornered him.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: With the storage locker evidence in police custody and the
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: gold ball studs identified, you would think the nightmare was
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: finally over for the Samsoe family.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: You'd hope so.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: But as we're about to see, the legal system wasn't
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: done with them yet. It was about to put the
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: victims' families through a completely new kind of hell. This
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: kicks off a decades-long legal nightmare spanning from 1980 all
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: the way to 2010.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: It's exhausting just to track it.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: The traumatic, agonizing churn of the appellate process is something
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: the general public rarely understands, right?
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: We watch a trial on TV, we hear a guilty verdict,
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: and we think it's the end of the story.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: Like it's wrapped up in a bow.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: But for families of victims, a capital conviction is often...
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: Just the beginning of a decades-long war of attrition. with
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: the state.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: Let's track this timeline because it is infuriating. Go for it.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: In 1980, Alcala goes on trial, is convicted, and is
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: sentenced to death for Robbins' murder. But the California Supreme
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: Court overturns it.
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: They throw it out.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: Why? Why? Because the jury was improperly told about his
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: prior sex crimes, including what he did to Tali Shapiro.
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: So they have to do it all again. Six years later,
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: in 1986, he is convicted a second time and sentenced
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: to death a second time. Fast forward 15 years to 2001,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: and a federal appeals court overturns that conviction over evidence issues.
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: Another reversal.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: He is granted a third trial. I have to ask.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: Why would a judge throw out a conviction just because
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: the jury knew he was already a bad guy? Doesn't
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: that prove he did it?
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: It's an incredibly frustrating concept for laypeople, but it is
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: a foundational pillar of American jurisprudence.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: Explain the logic there.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: The legal philosophy is that a defendant must be tried
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: strictly on the facts of the current crime, not on
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: their character or their past.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: Okay, I see.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: The fear is that if a jury hears about prior
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: bad acts... the prejudicial value outweighs the probative value, meaning
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: the jury might just say, he's a bad guy, he
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: probably did it, instead of actually evaluating the evidence of
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: the murder at hand.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: They don't want a biased jury.
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It is a noble legal principle designed to protect
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: the innocent, but when applied to a highly organized serial killer,
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: it becomes a weapon that the predator uses to endlessly
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: delay justice.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: It is just agonizing. I have such profound empathy for
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: Marianne Connolly. It's like surviving a horrific shipwreck, fighting the waves,
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: finally getting pulled onto a lifeboat, only for the legal
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: system to repeatedly pick you up and throw you back
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: into the freezing ocean every few years.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: That is exactly what it feels like for these families.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: She had to sit there, trial after trial, knowing this
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: monster might walk free on a technicality.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: It is re-victimization by the state. The legal system, in
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: its necessary pursuit of constitutional fairness for the defendant, often
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: completely blindfolds itself to the psychological destruction it wreaks on
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: the victim's families.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: Finally, we arrive at 2010.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: 2010.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: Orange County DA Matt Murphy is preparing for the third
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: trial for Robbins' murder. But then, a massive breakthrough occurs.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: Science finally catches up.
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: DNA.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: DNA links Alcala to four other unsolved murders in Los
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: Angeles from the late 70s. Jill Barkham, Georgia Wickstead, Charlotte Lamb,
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: and Jill Parenteau.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: Four more victims.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: Prosecutors make the incredibly bold move to combine all five
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: murder cases into one massive trial.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: That decision by Matt Murphy was brilliant legal strategy. How so?
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: By combining the cases, they elegantly bypassed the issue of
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: introducing prior bad acts.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: Oh, because they aren't prior anymore.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Because the other murders were now active, concurrent charges
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: in the exact same trial, the prosecution could present all
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: the evidence together. It allowed the jury to see the unmistakable,
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: horrific pattern of a serial killer rather than viewing Robin's
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: murder in an isolated vacuum.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: That is smart.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: Very smart.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: And the trial itself, it becomes a bizarre circus-like spectacle.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: Because Alcala decides to act as his own attorney.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: Which is almost always a disaster.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: He is cross-examining the police. He is directly interrogating the
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: families of the women he murdered. He even interrogates Robin's mother, Marianne.
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: Just cruel.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: And during this, she openly admits on the stand that
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: she brought a gun to the first trial, hoping to
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: get a clear shot to kill him.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: And you can't blame her.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: You really can't. But I really have to wonder, what
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: drives a man facing five first-degree murder charges with DNA
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: evidence stacked against him to represent himself?
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: This raises an important question about the absolute limits of
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: narcissistic delusion.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: As former FBI profiler Mary Ellen O'Toole explained, for a
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: psychopath like Alcala... acting as his own attorney, allowed him
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: to be like God in that courtroom.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: It's an ego trip.
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: It was the ultimate stage. He wasn't constrained by a
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: lawyer speaking for him. He got to dictate the narrative,
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: intimidate the witnesses face to face, and command the undivided
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: attention of the judge and jury.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: He's the star of the show.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: Yes. He was essentially reliving his dominance over the victims
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: by dominating the legal proceedings. It was never about winning
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: an acquittal. It was about exhorting control.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: It is sickening. And it reaches a peak of perversity
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: during his closing arguments for clemency.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: Oh, this part is just hard to believe.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: He's trying to convince the jury not to give him
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: the death penalty. And what does he do? He plays
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: a recording of Arlo Guthrie's song Alice's Restaurant.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: Why that song?
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: Specifically, he plays the lyrics about wanting to see blood
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: and gore and guts and veins in my teeth. Kill, kill, kill, kill.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: In a courtroom.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: He plays a song about slaughtering people to the jury,
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: deciding his fate.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: It is a deliberate taunt.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: Just mocking them.
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: He knew the evidence against him was insurmountable at this point.
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: The DNA was absolute. So facing the inevitable, he chose
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: to inflict one last moment of psychological terror on the courtroom.
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: It was his way of saying, you may kill me,
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: but I am still the monster in your nightmares. I
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: still hold the power.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: Thankfully, the jury wasn't swayed. He is sentenced to death
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: for the third time.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: Finally.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: But one of the most powerful moments of that trial
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: came during the penalty phase when Tali Shapiro took the stand.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: That must have been intense.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: The eight-year-old girl who survived his attack in 1968 is
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: now a grown woman, and she asks the court a haunting,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: unanswerable question. Why in the world are there so many
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: other victims when it was a known fact what he
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: did to me?
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: Talley's testimony cuts to the very core of the systemic
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: failure we've been discussing this whole time.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: It perfectly sums it up.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: The legal loop of the 1970s, the plea deal, the
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: lack of parole supervision, the siloed information, effectively endorsed his
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: subsequent killing spree.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: They let him do it.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: Her survival in 1968 was a blaring warning siren that
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: the justice system actively chose to mute in favor of
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: bureaucratic efficiency.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: California had finally locked him down, seemingly for good. But
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: the ghosts of his cross-country travels were still waiting for
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: their day in court.
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: The cold cases.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: Modern science was about to catch up with him on
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: a national scale, bringing us to the final chapter, closing
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: the cold cases from 2012 to 2016.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: This is where we see the magnificent triumph of modern
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: forensics and the relentless dedication of cold case detectives who
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: refused to let dusty files stay buried in basements.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: Let's look at how the dominoes fall. First, New York, 2012. Okay.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: It has been 41 years since Cornelia Crilley was murdered.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: The FBI database has finally evolved to a point where
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: that single, unmatched fingerprint found on the letter under her
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: body is run again.
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: The automated systems are finally in place.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: And this time, it pings. It matches Rodney Alcala. Furthermore,
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: modern forensic odontology matches his dental impressions to the bite
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: mark left on her body.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: Incredible science.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: In the Ellen Hover case, a witness who is re-interviewed
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: places a man matching Alcala's John Berger persona near the
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: dump site. Manhattan prosecutors indict him.
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: They've got him.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: And in a shocking move, Alcala actually pleads guilty to
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: both murders and receives 25 years to life. The closure
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: was so profound that the veteran judge actually cried at
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: the sentencing.
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: A psychopath pleading guilty is incredibly rare, but you have
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: to look at his situation.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: Why did he do it?
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: Well, Alcala was already on death row in California. The
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: guilty plea in New York was likely a calculated move
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: to avoid another grueling public trial where, as an aging man,
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: he wouldn't have the energy or the platform to control
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: the narrative as he had in 2010.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: Ah, that makes sense.
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: But for the prosecutors, it was an essential insurance policy.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: If California's death penalty was overturned a fourth time or
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: if he somehow found another legal loophole, New York had
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: a concrete cell waiting for him.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: And then we get to Wyoming between 2013 and 2016. Yes, Wyoming.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: This is where media, science, and a sister's 39-year search
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: collide in the most breathtaking way. The television show 48
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: Hours takes the thousands of photos from Alcala's storage locker
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: and posts them online, hoping the public can identify the women.
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: Utilizing crowdsourcing.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: Kathy Thornton's son sees the episode, goes online, and tells
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: his mom to look at the gallery. Kathy scrolls through
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: the faces, and she stops cold on a picture of
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: a beautiful woman sitting on a motorcycle in the desert.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: She recognizes her sister.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: She recognizes her sister Christine's uniquely hooked baby toe.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: It is an astounding detail. A tiny physical anomaly caught
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: on film decades earlier becomes the absolute key to unlocking
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: a 39-year mystery.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: Kathy submits her DNA to a national database. Meanwhile, in
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: Sweetwater County, Wyoming, Detective Jeff Sheman is looking at the
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: cold case of Granger Greta. the bones of a pregnant
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: Jane Doe found scattered on the prairie in 1982. Sheeman
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: discovers that the crime lab had incredibly preserved tiny skin
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: tissue and bone fragments for 30 years. He submits them
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: for mitochondrial DNA testing, and they match Kathy Thornton.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: A perfect match.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: I have to pause here. Why specifically mitochondrial DNA? What
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: makes that different from the DNA they use on regular
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: crime shows?
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: That is a brilliant question, and it really highlights the
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: leap in forensic science here.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: Tell me about it.
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: Regular nuclear DNA, the kind you usually hear about, which
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: gives you your unique genetic profile, degrades very quickly when
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: exposed to the elements.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: Oh, really?
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: Environmental factors like sunlight, moisture, and cellular breakdown destroy it.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: Granger Greta's bones were scattered on a harsh Wyoming prairie
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: for years. The nuclear DNA was completely wiped out.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: It was gone.
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: But mitochondrial DNA is structured entirely differently. It is circular,
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: which makes it more robust. And more importantly, there are
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: thousands of copies of it in every single cell compared
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: to just two copies of nuclear DNA.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: So it acts like a backup system.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: Exactly, the biological time caps. Furthermore, mitochondrial DNA is inherited
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: directly from the maternal line. It doesn't mix with the
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: father's DNA.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: So, a sister will have the exact same mitochondrial DNA
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: as her sibling. This technological marvel, understanding the cellular biology
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: of maternal inheritance, is what allowed a 30-year-old sun-bleached bone
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: fragment in Wyoming to be definitively matched to a living
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: sister in Texas.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: That is just incredible. It is a triumph of science
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: over time.
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: It's incredible. It took a television show posting photos online
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: to crack a 39-year-old missing persons case. It really makes
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: you wonder how many more families could find answers if
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: they just looked at that archive.
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: So many more.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: But Detective Sheeman and the prosecutor aren't done. They fly
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: to California to interview Alcala in the medical unit of
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: Corcoran Prison.
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: Finally confront him.
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: Alcala is frail in his 70s, reportedly suffering from borderline dementia.
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: They walk into his peach-colored cell and show him the
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: photo of Christine on the motorcycle.
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: His reaction is very telling.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: What happens next is profoundly disturbing. Can you interpret this
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: behavior for us? Because it is so bizarre.
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: The prosecutors described him looking at the photo, recognizing the
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: location instantly, and then placing the photo on his lap.
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: He uses his index finger to slowly trace Christine's body
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: on the paper for five uninterrupted minutes.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: Oh, God.
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: Then he starts tapping the photograph right over a body,
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: the tapping getting louder and louder. Even frail, even facing death,
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: this was a final chilling display of a predator exerting control.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: He wasn't confused at all.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: It wasn't a senile old man confused by a picture.
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: He was actively reliving the murder. The tracing and tapping
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: were tactile manifestations of the dominance he felt in that
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: moment in the desert in 1977. It's disgusting. He was
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: a master manipulator, holding his dark secret over the detectives
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: to the bitter end. He denied killing her. but arrogantly
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: admitted she was alive when he left her, which the
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: prosecutor rightfully took as a de facto confession.
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: They charged him, right.
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: Officially charging him with first-degree murder, though he was never
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: extradited to stand trial.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: He died in prison in 2021 at the age of 77.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: A quiet end for a loud monster. We've covered a
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: massive amount of ground today. For you listening, we've journeyed
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: from the tragic danger of systemic legal loopholes and jurisdictional
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: blind spots in the 60s and 70s.
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: A completely different world back then.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: We've witnessed the incredible necessary evolution of forensic science over
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: four decades. And most importantly, we've seen the awe-inspiring, enduring
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: resilience of the victims' families.
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: The real heroes of this story.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: Women like Marianne Connolly and Kathy Thornton, who simply refused
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: to let a broken system erase the people they loved.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us on this intense
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: deep dive.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: It's been a heavy but necessary conversation.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: It really has. But before we go, I want to
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: leave you with one final thought. We've spent the last
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: hour marveling at the Henry classification system for fingerprints. The
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: cellular magic of mitochondrial DNA and the sprawling digital databases
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: that eventually brought Rodney Alcala down.
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: The science is amazing, yes.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: But what if the true lesson here isn't about forensic
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: science at all? Think about Cheryl Bradshaw, the woman on
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: the dating game, who walked away backstage because she simply
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: felt he was creepy. Right. Think about the Good Samaritan
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: in 1968 who saw a beige car, felt something was wrong,
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: and immediately called the police.
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: They listened to their instincts.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: Think about Jackie Young on the beach in 1979 who
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: spooked him just by asking the girls if they were okay.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: In an era where we rely so heavily on data, algorithms,
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: and technology to keep us safe, have we forgotten the primal,
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: life-saving power of our own human intuition to spot a
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: monster in our midst?
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: That is exactly the point we all need to take away.
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: The technology eventually caught him, but human intuition is what
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: disrupted him time and time again. I encourage everyone listening
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: to always question your surroundings, trust your gut instincts unequivocally,
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: and remember that critical thinking and situational awareness are our
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: best defenses in an increasingly complex world.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: Until next time, take care.